How to Meal-Prep for the Week Ahead, Become the Queen of Carrots, and Achieve Enlightenment

Meal prepping on Sunday places you next to the saints in terms of
holiness. And assembling meals for the week ahead can be so easy. Just
imagine what you’ll do with your new spare time! Follow these ten simple
steps and you can free up your weeknights and become the Queen of
Carrots, for starters.

Step 1: The Foraging

Go to Whole Foods, or any other grocery store that assaults your wallet
and forces you to ogle its cheese selection slack-jawed and drooling.
Locate the thickest, most handsome carrots and fill your cart to the
brim with them. You heard me correctly: To. The. Brim. When you check
out and the clerk asks, “Are you sure you want this many carrots?” say,
“Of course. I am to become their Queen.”

Step 2: The Choppening

Chop approximately a thousand carrots. By the end, you’ll have chopped a
thousand carrots. This is a really big deal! You now know the
self-righteousness of being a meal-prepper.

Step 3: The Coronation

Construct a crown of ten to twenty carrots (the exact number of carrots
depends on your desired level of ornamentation). Hold a coronation for
yourself. You are now the Queen of Carrots. Conduct your business
accordingly.

Step 4: The Quinoa Cloud

Make a big batch of quinoa. Imagine the little grains levitating above
the pot and swarming around you. You are a Carrot Queen in a quinoa
cloud. With a faint snap, each quinoa bead latches onto your skin, its
sprout tail aquiver. You find that you have a layer of quinoa covering
your body, like some protein-packed peach fuzz.

Step 5: The Tupperware

Open a Tupperware of sliced carrots. Rub one across the back of your
hand. Doesn’t that feel like human touch? Perhaps the consoling touch of
a friend you want to make your lover. But you cannot take on another
lover. Not yet. Not this early in your reign.

Step 6: The Part That Involves Beets

Roast a bunch of beets. Beets are good for you, like therapy and
high-pitched screaming into the night while wearing only your carrot
crown. Beets: the high-pitched-screaming-into-the-night-while-nude of
vegetables! When your hands are dyed red, intensely mutter, “Out, damned
spot” in front of your carrot court. Then explain to them that you are
kidding! It’s a classic Lady Macbeth goof. The Queen of Carrots has a
sense of humor, contrary to the rumors.

Step 7: The Assembling of the Troops

Chop broccoli into florets. This is your army. You are a meal-prepper
and a queen. Imagine your upcoming week’s anxieties are engaged in
battle with your fearsome brassica forces. The anxieties are winning.
The to-do’s—they’re everywhere. They’re coming for you. You must not let
them win. Show them who is queen. Deploy your broccoli troops.

Step 8: The Expansion of Your Empire

Fling broccoli across your center island toward the masses of
encroaching enemies also known as your husband and your therapist. They
see you in your crown; they want your power. They are in awe of the
elaborate carrot diorama you’ve arranged on every available
surface—thousands of carrots perched upright, cut-side down, displayed
in a fearsome tableau. Yell at them, “I AM A MEAL-PREPPER! I REIGN SUPREME!” Keep flinging broccoli.

Step 9: The Quick and Sudden Letdown

As they wheel you away to a place where you will be able to “get some
rest” and “stop making ungodly amounts of precooked grains,” laugh to
yourself. You did it. You prepared for the week ahead. You stacked
Tupperware high and wide in your fridge. And, for a fleeting moment, you
achieved enlightenment.

Step 10: The Future

When you return home, you will come up with a new plan. You will just
sign up for Blue Apron. They do all that shit for you.